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American toddlers are eating more sugar than the amount recommended for adults

325 points by prostoalex 8y ago

azinman2 8y ago
The article didn’t really mention the sources. It’s hard to believe the quotes sugar from drinks are being given to toddlers, but perhaps that’s in the form of juice?
- philliphaydon 8y ago
  Does it matter if it’s fruit juice sugar? Fruit juice sugar is already bad for kids let alone fruit juice with added sugar which is basically most fruit juices you buy. It’s really hard to find 100% fruit juice.
  - ledriveby 8y ago
    100% fruit juice is still bad for you; without the pulp to slow down digestion, your liver and pancreas both take a beating from digesting all that fructose at once.
    - philliphaydon 8y ago
      (That’s why I said fruit juice is bad for you) But yes, I concur. http://www.enzafoods.co.nz/the-company/technology/fruit-sugar-chart http://www.enzafoods.co.nz/the-company/technology/fruit-suga... What do you give kids other than water?!?
      - unwind 8y ago
        Here in gloriously over-protective Sweden, the word "juice" can only be used to describe 100% juice, no additives are allowed. I think concentrate can have vitamins added to bring the result back to fresh juice's levels, but that's it. Also, (cow's) milk is popular and IMO much better than juice.
        extrapickles 8y ago
        In the US, its 100% juice that is protected, where they are only allowed to use juice if they claim that (not sure about fortification though). The main loophole is White Grape Juice, which is very high in sugar and has very little taste. Its pretty common to include it in juices here in the US to bring the sugar content up.
        sandl 8y ago
        Milk may be better than juice, but it isn't really well suited for humans either. The hormone mixture stimulates cell growth and helps a calf double its weight in 100 days, but what else profits from fast cell growth? Cancer. You will find a lot of studies that support this thesis, and you'll find even more studies denying it - but guess who finances the latter, in most cases it's the dairy industrial complex.
        unwind 8y ago
        In the EU (which Sweden belongs to), giving hormones to dairy animals to increase milk production is illegal, so that was not part of my reasoning. In other countries milk might be less optimal then (but perhaps you get organic milk or something with fewer additives).
        sandl 8y ago
        I wasn't alluding to BST. Milk contains growth hormones naturally, because calves half to gain an absurdly amount of weight in a short time. We don't need to grow so fast as humans.
        Angostura 8y ago
        Just in case anyone is worried by the suggestion in the sibling comment that dairy products are strongly linked to cancer and the evidence is being suppressed by the industry, here's what Cancer Research UK has to say on the matter: > Milk and dairy are good sources of calcium and protein which are needed as part of a healthy, balanced diet. Calcium is important for teeth and bone health. > Studies looking into the link between cancer and dairy products have not given clear results. There is evidence that dairy products could reduce the risk of bowel cancer, but we cannot say for sure that this is the case. There is no strong evidence linking dairy products to any other types of cancer. We need further research to find out more about the links between dairy products and cancer risk. > Hormones in milk > In some countries, a hormone called bovine somatotrophin (BST) is used to speed up or increase the production of milk or meat. In the UK and the rest of Europe, farmers are banned from using this hormone, and the import of meat from countries, including the US, where this hormone is used is also banned. This ban is on animal welfare grounds and not because there is any proven effect on human health. Independent health bodies including the European Union Scientific Committee have reviewed the evidence on BST and found it does not pose any harm to human health.
      - ido 8y ago
        Unsugared tea! My kid drinks fruit or herbal tea with no additives once or twice a day and otherwise only water.
      - matco11 8y ago
        I suppose, what you do depends on the kids’age. During the day, you don’t really - have to - give them anything else other than water... I squeeze orange juice myself a few times/month. If I buy ready-made juice it’s always without added sugar, and I dilute it with water 1:1 when I pour it in their cups.
      - cjrp 8y ago
        > What do you give kids other than water?!? Lots of kids in England drink squash (maybe called cordial elsewhere?). It's sometimes referred to as juice, but it's much less sugary than actual fruit juice. Is that not a thing elsewhere?
        wiredfool 8y ago
        Squash/Ribena/'Juice' is heavily sweetened with chemical sweeteners.
        Angostura 8y ago
        Ribena didn't used to be sweetened with artificial sweeteners - it used sugar. Unfortunately, in reaction to the UK government sugar tax, it now is artificially sweetened and tastes foul.
        musage 8y ago
        The claim was "much less sugary than actual fruit juice", and the key word in the response to that was "heavily" -- artificial or not, "foul tasting" or not, is besides the point.
        Symbiote 8y ago
        That's a big change since I lived in England. There used to be half a shelf of "no added sugar" squash, and half a shelf of "no artificial sweeteners". It seems there's now much less choice of sugar-only drinks, although they still exist. Several have redesigned bottles that look more appealing to adults. http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Squash_And_Cordials_in_Tesco.html http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Squash_And_Cordials_i...
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > What do you give kids other than water?!? Well, for my toddler: Milk [0]. Cold herbal tea (generally, diluted chamomile tea.) The occasional yogurt + whole fruit smoothie. (The latter as a treat—either that or a cookie but not both—on grocery shopping trips.) [0] which includes “chocolate milk”, which is approximately a 7:1 ratio of whole milk to ultrafiltered chocolate milk.
      - aikinai 8y ago
        In Japan most kids drink tea, usually barely tea.
      - pofilat 8y ago
        Carbonated water. Why put sugar in water? Water is great.
  - labster 8y ago
    Hard to find fruit juice? All I have to do is go to the supermarket, and look through a few bottles until I find one that says 100% fruit juice. (Alternate plan: go to back yard, collect oranges, juice them). Compare that harrowing experience to a hunter-gatherer, sheesh.
    - philliphaydon 8y ago
      Yeah. Look at them. Because the vast majority have added sugar. That’s my point is it’s more common for fruit juices to have added sugar than to be 100%. Which doesn’t help parents who think they are doing good by buying juice rather than coke for their kid.
      - emmanuel_1234 8y ago
        Even though it doesn't matter. Freshly squeezed juice from your garden have about 114g of carbs / liter (of which 90g of sugar). Coke has 110g of carbs / liter (all sugar). Yes, coke has more sugar, but it's the same order of magnitude, fruit juice, even freshly squeezed from pure organic oranges is very much comparable to soda.
        raarts 8y ago
        Fruits are the sweets of nature. Don't eat too much of them.
        mkl 8y ago
        Fruit is okay, but fruit juice is another story. Without the fibre it's digested quite differently and is not very good for you.
      - Sargos 8y ago
        Where do you live? I'm from the US and here it's very easy to find 100% juice as that's the most advertised kind and is on the "prime shelf" at the store. It's usually printed in a central spot on the label near the logo. The added sugar juices became very unpopular years ago when sugar got its current bad reputation.
  - yumyai 8y ago
    "fruit juice" Wait, is there a "non-fruit" juice?
WalterSear 8y ago
Good thing they aren't adults, then.
emmanuel_1234 8y ago
It's absolutely mind blowing that this article doesn't mention diabetes as the main problem from eating too much sugar. It affects a third of Americans and is spreading around the world at an alarming rate. Why is that? Why is it that my mother knew about sugar and diabetes, but it's almost as if we forgot and are painfully trying to prove the connection again.
- notyme 8y ago
  Just look at the advertising and lobbying spending of sugar industry to gauge their power over population's discretionary spending.Also, bulk of their marketing spend is during cartoon programming of kids, "catch'em young"! They successfully shifted blame from sugar to fat as cause of modern lifestyle diseases for last two decades. Would highly recommend the book "Case against Sugar" by Gary Taubes discussed amply here[0] and here[1]. Also recommend the documentary "Super Size Me"[2] a revealing take on workings of fast food industry. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12480733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12480733 [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521882 [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgcc_ZZnAgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgcc_ZZnAgM
  - HedgeSparrow 8y ago
    I agree with you for the first two points, but Supersize Me is a sham of science.
- philip1209 8y ago
  America is in denial that their low-fat diet fails, and instead creates obesity, type two diabetes, and heart disease.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    Low-carb has replaced low-fat as the diet trend for the last couple decades; and most people that aren't on the popular trendy diet aren't eating low-fat, they are eating high-everytjin, especially both carbs and fat (they may consume some low fat products intermittently for the illusion of doing something, but the typical American diet isn't low in fat.)
willtim 8y ago
The food industry needs a lot more regulation IMHO. It often misleads the consumer with its marketing, but a cereal or juice drink is not healthy when it's rammed full of sugar.
- arthurcolle 8y ago
  On a related note, I'm repeatedly surprised by how much the packaging design in foods/edible products seems to be explicitly designed to convey a sense of "health-conscious" awareness/ things like cute leaf designs and appealing white/off-white packaging when really if you look at the ingredients, itll be full of refined sugars - seems like the related industries might need some kind of regulations as well But I guess this would just roll up into "food industry regulation" anyways
- spodek 8y ago
  > food industry When you refine the addictive, pleasure-causing white powder out of a plant and make cocaine or heroine we call it a drug. For historical reasons when we do it to make sugar we call it food, but it seems more of a drug. Maybe drug regulations should apply.
  - wilsonnb2 8y ago
    > For historical reasons Seems more likely that it's because people eat sugar, and they don't eat heroin or cocaine.
    - pofilat 8y ago
      People chew and brew coca like coffee and tea
  - stephen_g 8y ago
    I think we all agree that most people eat way too much refined sugar, and technically don't really need to eat any, but come on, that's just ridiculous hyperbole... Since most plant foods we eat, hell, even breast milk contains the exact same sugars that are refined into table sugar, syrups, etc. and the chemicals themselves are required by the body for things like brain function, it's probably fair enough to call it a food...
kwhitefoot 8y ago
In my household sugary drinks were only allowed occasionally, otherwise the children just drank water. Now that they are grown up they continue to drink mostly water. It helps that we live in a small town in Norway that has very good water. If we had to drink water from some of the places I have visited in the US the story might have been different as the water tasted so bad. I suppose we would have bought bottled water.
- apexalpha 8y ago
  Same here, milk for breakfast and lunch and water otherwise. We got a litle bowl of crisps and a glass of cola each saturday.
- sundvor 8y ago
  Agreed Norwegian water was great. I recall when I grew up in Fredrikstad, Coca Cola was always the go-to drink #1 at parties etc. They did a stellar job inserting themselves. Fortunately those were the only occasions when we'd have it, and as kids we were far more active back then - roaming the streets and forests, so we had more than enough activity to offset. My son's grown up on water after the breast and has very little interest in soft drinks now, not that we encourage him to try them out.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
Last year I went a month avoiding any food or drink that contained added sugar. Health benefits aside (I was also exercising a lot more and drinking less, so I can't comment on specific benefits), it was incredibly hard. It wasn't the sugar cravings that were hard. I didn't get them at all, I didn't miss sweet food or sugar one bit. The hard part was actually finding food that didn't contain added sugar. I was basically relegated to preparing all my food from scratch. Practically anything in a packet contained sugar. Even the most innocuous things would contain it. Obviously some things only contain low amounts and that's normal (e.g. cured meats), but I couldn't eat most bread, any sauces, the vast majority of pre-prepared meals (except for "paleo" meals), or any spice mixes. Even bottled mayonnaise contains sugar! It made trying to find a snack incredibly difficult, I basically had to eat carrots and hummus. At least whisky contains no added sugar (caramel colouring wasn't counted as sugar, in this case).
- maxerickson 8y ago
  Funny that you split the hair on the caramel colouring in the fermented, distilled sugar.
  - opencl 8y ago
    The fermenting process gets rid of almost all of the sugar.
    - detaro 8y ago
      By turning it into alcohol, at only about 20 % loss of caloric content (if my math is correct).
    - maxerickson 8y ago
      Yeah, I used the past tense up there. It also wouldn't be added sugar if it was there from the start, it would be remaining sugar. But ethanol probably isn't a whole lot better as excess calories than sugars are.
- martinwww 8y ago
sundvor 8y ago
Wow... ${expletives}. It is all starting to make sense to me now. Ref what I wrote on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17017920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17017920 : "As a Norwegian, when I visited Boston in 1999 for an Allaire dev conference I saw more grossly fat / obese people in the _hour_ spent switching flights at Newark airport than I had in my (then) home country in the preceding year. I was really taken aback." I never got my now 7y son into juices etc and Coke products are generally banned in our home. He has a very healthy body weight, so that's one fewer thing he has to worry about whilst growing up.
- adventured 8y ago
  So was the entire point of your post an excuse to do the typical obnoxious Scandinavian thing and brag about how Scandinavians are superior? What else are you saying in the content of that post? Why should I ref that linked post, you quoted all of it, except for this cheap bash: "There's clearly a lot of things the US is not doing right on many, many levels." I'd love an explanation for how all of that adds up to anything other than: US dumb, Scandinavians superior peoples. I mean that's really great, just put it over there in the giant pile of worthless US bashing. You're in Australia and conveniently avoided talking about their similarly extreme 29% obesity rate (the US is at 36%).
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  I was in Copenhagen earlier this year and I commented to my wife and our friends multiple times on how there were just no obese people anywhere. You Scandinavians are obviously doing something right.
  - toxik 8y ago
    Some do, especially in bigger cities. Rural and suburban Sweden for example is getting obese at an alarming rate. But don't worry, the tax payers can foot that bill too I guess.
  - jernfrost 8y ago
    A lot of that comes down to much stronger belief in government regulation and initiative. In the US it seems there is an outrage every time somebody suggests some kind of regulation to promote health and welfare. I suspect that outrage is partly manufactured by the sugar and junk food industry though. Copenhagen is also very active in getting people to bike in town instead of driving.
sharcerer 8y ago
I see this happening a lot. For eg, on youtube I often see Casey neistat buying candies,marshmallow candy for his daughter. Now i am not targeting him.just pointing out what i notice.(he has made great videos on actual calory content in butgers etc).He also has some juice many a times after runs, i dunno whether that's healthy juice without sugar. But, basically parents give in to kid's demands. Also, lack of suitable choices. I am in India, and even see poor mothers,kids purchasing chips or eating some refined flour item on roadside coz it's easily available. Also, a while ago i read that in Brazil ,Nestle has these agents who sell nestle food poducts door2door, also obesity has risen due to high consumption of cheap ,packaged products like Nestle's. Big Food,Big Oil are the most prime corporate evils whose actions will be felt for many decades to come. I guess there are food startups trying to make good products, but haven't heard of a lot. I dunno whether their low sugar initiatives aee actually good, i mean it's obvious that after a cetain time they will have to change or perish but the question is how long.
- themodelplumber 8y ago
  Part of the problem is that in moderation, it's fine. I experienced this personally during a time of extreme weight loss; about 1/4 to 1/3 of my diet was chocolate in the form of boxes of candy bars I bought on clearance. The rest was greens, massive amounts of spinach, and nuts. I went to the hospital later that year with a kidney stone, and was told: Stop eating the spinach and cut back on nuts, these foods are way too high in oxalates! Other than that I was healthy as a horse, with a resting pulse of 40 bpm and having lost 100 lbs. I'm an anecdote, but many people look and feel OK and eat tons of refined sugar. That's part of the reason it's still around. We like it and show no ill effects.
  - mnw21cam 8y ago
    Different people are different. I seem to be able to eat any level of sugar I want without putting on a pound, but the missus is having to go on a low-carb diet.
- gerardnll 8y ago
  Food is not only calories. Quality of ingredients matter. Plenty of studies relate refined oils, flours, sugars to cancer, diabetes, heart problems. Cheap, easy to get != healthy. It's cheap and unhealthy because ingredients are low quality. Was processed food in supermarkets a hundred years ago? Humans don't need it. Of course food is safer than 100 years ago, but also processed food has pulled apart healthy and unprocessed food from our diets. Nestle, Coca-Cola, Unilever, they are in universities, associations, etc... we see plenty of cases here in Spain. They do courses for professionals... and they are the brands with the best public perception. And we say advertising doesn't work?
gerardnll 8y ago
'We’ve long known that processed sugar is bad for kids.' Why 'for kids'? It's bad for everyone. People don't realize sugar is the most socially accepted and legal drug ever and with more addicts I would say. There's plenty of studies that talk about how bad are added sugars. Governments don't do enough to contain this drug. WHO recommends free sugars to be less than 10% of daily calorie intake. And suggests going down to 5%. Source: http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/guidelines/sugar_intake_information_note_en.pdf http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/guidelines/sugar_i... An adult that takes 2000 calories, should not take more than 25g of free sugars. Now tell me if it's easy for you to not go over the limit. Kids and todlers food has more sugar than adult processed food, maybe so they create a dependency on sugary products since they are babies? And so they buy these products when they are older. We've all seen kids asking cookies and shitty food instead of vegetables (or unprocessed food), they get angry and parents have to say 'no, you've to have lunch now'. Isn't that strange? We are so used to this. Food is not only calories. Quality of ingredients matter. Plenty of studies relate refined oils, flours, sugars to cancer, diabetes, heart problems. Cheap, easy to get != healthy. It's cheap and unhealthy because ingredients are low quality. Was processed food in supermarkets a hundred years ago? Humans don't need it. Of course food is safer than 100 years ago, but also processed food has pulled apart healthy and unprocessed food from our diets. Nestle, Coca-Cola, Unilever, they are in universities, associations, etc... we see plenty of cases here in Spain. They do courses for professionals... and they are the brands with the best public perception. And we say advertising doesn't work? So many inputs when you go to a supermarket and so easy to fall for a chocolate bar, for some cereals, sweetened yogurts, refined flours white breads... Then, they try to sell you some (supposedly healthy) food because it has some part of bio unrefined flours, but it's the same disguised as healthy. To avoid all these games they play you just have to look for vegetables, fish, (some) meat, dairy products, eggs, fruits, dried fruits... just unprocessed food or foods like canned peas and other minimal treated foods were a physical process like boiling has been applied.
- croon 8y ago
  This has become increasingly vivid for me since having a child. I've only been "health conscious" for half a decade or so, and went sugarless for at least a year of that, but got off that mainly for social reasons and difficulties finding food when not at home. But to the point: We have thus far made all her food from scratch, and would never in a million years entertain the idea of feeding her soda, cookies, or ice cream, when she's already super happy with cinnamon oatmeal with mashed apple or brown rice carrot chicken with cumin and black pepper. Because why not? That stuff is super tasty. What's weird and really scary is realizing the effect sugar has on your own psyche. I know sugar only do bad things to my body in the long term, and yet I stuff my face with a chocolate bar for the immediate euphoria. Stepping back and reviewing the ingrained cultural tradition of sugar becomes fascinating when we consider it only does harm, and it's extremely addictive. If we (hyperbole, I know, or is it?) substitute heroin for it, and then discuss it like we do sugar? "It's his/her birthday, we should celebrate it with a cake (heroin). Just this once" "Heroin is fine in moderation, if you otherwise live healthy and eat well". "I only use heroin sometimes, and I'm in control of it." I mean, I guess all of those can be true, but it's keeping something really bad in your life that probably takes a heavy mental toll, rather than just avoiding it. And I'm as guilty as anyone. And I'm sure my daughter will be exposed in time regardless of what we as parents do. Maybe it's not as dire as I portray it, but does it have any redeeming qualities, at all?
partycoder 8y ago
The problem with sugar is that there's no daily recommended value... because that value would be 0. A "safe value" for an adult would probably be up to 40g. A can of soda has exactly that amount. Now imagine a kid eating cereal, snacks, then soda... can probably end up having 160g of sugar in a day, or about 38 teaspoons.
chriselles 8y ago
I went strict ketogenic diet(high fat, protein, very low carb, zero sugar) 16 weeks ago. I’ve dropped 20kg in that time and just last week ran a marathon carrying a 25kg pack in 5 hours 48 minutes with just an 11 week train up. Zero sugar diet has been a massive positive game changer for me. You can still have desserts that don’t require sugar! The only difficulty with it has been the struggle of what/where to eat when traveling. It now really clicks for me after several years of putting the pieces of the puzzle together. 3 years ago I met a cohort of middle aged male vets from a specific military unit with a work culture where sugar was viewed as poison for the 40 years since this community’s inception. They all seemed noticeably younger than their actual years. I’d like to learn if telomere length is shortened by sugar consumption and conversely lengthened by the absence of sugar in your diet.
bsaul 8y ago
Recently spent a month in SF after having spent a month in japan : US needs to restart its food habits from scratch. yes, you can eat very healthily if you’re ready to spend 40$ per meal ( either in restaurants or buying in organic groceries), but anything under that price will get you fat, sweeten,artifically flavored, huge piles of sh*t. And this was SF. I can’t even imagine how it’s like in the average US city.
- halflings 8y ago
  > if you’re ready to spend 40$ per meal ( either in restaurants or buying in organic groceries), but anything under that price will get you fat, sweeten,artifically flavored, huge piles of sh*t. This is really exaggerated. I lived in SF, and would easily prepare healthy meals for ~$6-8 per meal ($2-3 for some proteins, $1 or less for some portion of rice or some bread, and the rest for vegetables). Maybe $10 max if I felt like eating avocado :) For one thing, healthy != organic. As much as pesticides are harmful on the long run, the biggest health hazard is the type of food you consume, not its provenance. Eating bananas or some oatmeal instead of pop tarts and Oreos saves you money.
  - samsonradu 8y ago
    You used the word prepare. Plenty of people do not have that option, either because they're in a hurry or they don't live nearby or, like in my case, they're tourists. Though I agree that SF is better than other places, having more health-ish food shops, overall US-wise it's not easy to avoid sugars.
    - frockington 8y ago
      It's really easy to avoid sugars and when not in SF its even cheaper. In Ohio a healthy meal for 2 would be ~$5. $0.50 for rice, $0.50 for beans, 2 peppers for $1.50, pound of chicken for $1.50.
    - halflings 8y ago
      GP spent a month in SF so I assumed they weren't a tourist. They also mentioned organic groceries so they included cooked meals in this. Even if you eat out, you won't have to pay $40 for a healthy meal. You can get something good for $15-20, which is still pretty expensive... but not $40, and not significantly more expensive than comparable unhealthy foods; of course McDonalds is cheaper, but then again unless we're talking about people that have no money to spare, it's more likely they're choosing unhealthy food rather than being forced to buy it.
golemotron 8y ago
The scariest part of this article is that there is still an amount of sugar that is recommended for adults.
- frockington 8y ago
  What makes a recommended dose of sugar scarier than childhood obesity? I'd rather there was some guideline than none at all
ainiriand 8y ago
As it should be, sugar is a reward for the body and only very occasionally should be eaten. 0 sugar should be the norm. Maybe you can have some cookies or homemade pastry on a special day but that's it, the rest is harming you.
ponderatul 8y ago
Who needs conspiracies when you have pure greed and unmanaged corporate interests.
jernfrost 8y ago
You need to tackle this stuff early on. Here in Norway sweets are banned from pre-school and school in lunch boxes, including for birth days. There are no pre-school or school celebrations involving sweets. The kids get involved early in learning about healthy food making and we get a cook book about what sort of food one should make for children when they start school. This is something so serious for people's future and life that I don't think one can focus enough on it.
- sudhirj 8y ago
  Can you link to the rules / cookbook if available?
  - jernfrost 8y ago
    I'll check with my wife later what the title was and if they got it online.
    - sgc 8y ago
      Thanks, I am curious as well.
  - jernfrost 8y ago
    Here is a link to the current version: http://www.kagge.no/index.cfm?tmpl=butikk&a=product_inline&b_kid=98232&b_id=1195599 http://www.kagge.no/index.cfm?tmpl=butikk&a=product_inline&b... The description is in Norwegian but I can give a quick summary: It gives recipes for breakfast, lunch boxes, food for hiking trips (hiking is very common in Norway), dinner, supper and snacks. The recipes are simple and tasty. There are discussion of what is healthy and what one should eat. It has different authors. One of the co-authors is Rune Blomhoff who is nutritional science professor at university of Oslo and one of the leading researchers in the world on anti-oxydants. In our book there are discussion for each dish what part of the food making the kids can participate in. It is to encourage children to learn about food themselves and get used to making healthy food themselves.
    - 8y ago
zby 8y ago
What is really the difference between what we call sugar and regular carbohydrates that constitute a huge part of our diet? They all enter the blood stream as monosaccharides. There is difference in how fast this happens - but is that so important?
- TurboHaskal 8y ago
  We should now put babies on ketogenic diets just because the majority of the adult population is sedentary, apparently.
- scroot 8y ago
  Robert Lustig argues that the rate is precisely what's important: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
- paulsutter 8y ago
  Table sugar is half fructose half dextrose. Fructose is metabolized through the liver similar to alcohol, whereas dextrose is glucose and metabolized like a simple carb. Fructose has been increasing as a percent of daily calories since the 70s as a consequence of attempts to reduce fat, and this is the likely cause behind the massive increase in diabetes.
  - refurb 8y ago
    Table sugar is half fructose and half glucose.
    - mrob 8y ago
      Dextrose is an alternative name for D-glucose (the naturally occurring isomer of glucose). The parent comment even said "dextrose is glucose".
TurboHaskal 8y ago
I fail to see the issue here. Toddlers need plenty of energy and calorie dense food, unlike the average sedentary American.
- Freak_NL 8y ago
  Childhood obesity is a growing concern. The idea is that growing up with a healthy eating pattern can prevent obesity and other health problems, because changing ingrained habits is very hard. Eating healthy (i.e., eating normally) can be a valuable part of their education.
spodek 8y ago
> The study found that toddlers 12 to 18 months consumed 5.5 teaspoons per day, and that toddlers 19 to 23 months consumed 7.1 teaspoons. Toddlers consumed? More like parents fed them. Toddlers eat what's put in front of them. > parents might want to consider cutting soft drinks, fruit drinks, . . . "might want to consider*?!?! Might they want to consider not giving the kids cocaine too?
- ebikelaw 8y ago
  The parents at my kids’ school talk about “trying” to get their kids to eat right. I just dont get it. You want them to eat something? You give it to them! If you don't want them to eat something then don't put it on the table. This could not be simpler. My kids beg for chard and broccoli.
  - protonimitate 8y ago
    I think in America there is a huge misconception on what 'hungry' actually is/feels like. People think that if you don't stuff your kid 3 times a day with massive quantities of food, they will fade away over night. It's very easy to refuse food and be picky when you are not truly hungry. My personal rule of thumb is if my least favorite food doesn't sound edible, I don't actually need to eat.
    - neutronicus 8y ago
      I've got a nephew-to-be in Israel who's a really picky eater, and his parents resort to bribing him sugar to get him to eat healthier stuff. But, like, the kid is demonstrably underweight for his age, shorter than all his classmates, etc. So I don't know if just starving him is the right call either. Some people (you) get lucky and don't have to make the decision, but sometimes it actually is hard to get kids to eat.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Timpy 8y ago
Taking responsibility for your health is discouraging in America. You have to go through great lengths to avoid added sugars, companies hide or obscure the amount of sugar they're putting in their product. I'm tired of feeling like I have to defend myself from the people trying to sell me things, it's difficult trying to make decisions that are best for me when multi-billion dollar companies are doing everything they can to manipulate me into consuming their products.
- jernfrost 8y ago
  I hear you. When we took our baby to the US on vacation I found it really hard to find appropriate food. American baby food had added salt and sugar which is illegal to add to baby food in Norway. We have the opposite "problem". There is no way to find baby food jars with salt or added sugar. That can't be sold in the store. I don't get why America is so against regulation like this to promote the welfare of the most previous thing in people's lives. Do corporate interests really have that much power?
  - Timpy 8y ago
    >Do corporate interests really have that much power? In short, yes.
    - jernfrost 8y ago
      Why isn't there more political engagement to change that? Like pass laws to limit corporate influence?
  - psyc 8y ago
    Corporate interests have nearly all of the power, as far as I can tell. They also constitute a huge part of the culture, and occupy a psychological position that I would call almost sacred.
- beezle 8y ago
  I grew up in the 70s and 80s. Notice a few comments elsewhere about how skinny people on TV in that period looked. Yet, many, if not most, of the products available then are still on the market today. Even the really bad ones like.. Coke or Captain Crunch or.. ice cream! If kids, and people in general, are suffering from too much sugar the blame falls squarely on their own shoulders. If you are so lazy that the only food bought is heavily processed, then yes, your daily intake of sugar, fats and calories will be quite high. Not giving your kids juice boxes thrice times daily will go a long way too, but you may need to listen to them whine about having to drink.. water.
gameswithgo 8y ago
It is being discovered that obesity in kids also lowers their IQs. Obesity is one of the reasons US healthcare is so expensive as well. There are some things we can do to put a dent in this that should appeal to both left and right leaning Americans - like ending subsides on foods used to make sugar (corn). If there are any influential people in the thread, I can't imagine why we can't make this happen, this is a crisis.
maxxxxx 8y ago
Just look at the size of candy bars. When I was a kid the candy bars were at Max half the size of what i see now in stores. Same for ice cream scoops. They are a full meal today.
cimmanom 8y ago
Try, for a week, tracking the total amount of sugar you consume each day. If you live in the US, it's likely to be shockingly higher than you might have guessed. For instance, a single "protein bar" can provide 3/4 of your recommended daily sugar intake (for a man) or 100% (for a woman). Getting in the habit of checking utrition labels also reveals some surprises and frustrations. In the average American grocery store, try to find a single cold breakfast cereal with less than 5g of sugar per serving.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  There are plenty of breakfast cereals like that: Cheerios, Chex, Rice Krispies, Corn flakes, Wheaties, Grape nuts, Life, Shredded wheat, .... They are still pure processed carbs, not really the best regular breakfast.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    I thought that too. And then I actually checked the nutrition labels for Cheerios and Rice Krispies, etc. Of the ones you listed, only Shredded Wheat has less than 5g sugar per serving.
    - jacobolus 8y ago
      Cheerios is 1g sugar per cup of cereal according to the label on the box in my pantry, etc.
      - cimmanom 8y ago
        Are you in the US? Last I looked in the grocery store (about 3 months ago), it was 9g.
        jacobolus 8y ago
        http://www.generalmills.com/~/media/Images/Brands/Nutritional_Images/Big_G/Cheerios.JPG http://www.generalmills.com/~/media/Images/Brands/Nutritiona... You were probably looking at one of the sugar-added variants like Honey Nut Cheerios, Very Berry Cheerios, Chocolate Cheerios, Frosted Cheerios, ...
JoshMnem 8y ago
It probably helps to set a good example for kids. I eliminated nearly all sugar about three years ago and highly recommend it. Food is fuel, not a recreational drug. Added sugar is purely recreational.
elvirs 8y ago
there is sugar in absolutely everything in America. Bread, cereal, oatmeal, any drink, even canned tomatoes have sugar in them. I don't know whats american food manufacturers' obsession with putting sugar into everything. The govt should mandate a huge warning label on foods that contains more than 1% sugar in it just like they did with cigarettes. May be then manufacturers will be discouraged from supplementing nutritious ingredients with the poison called sugar.
sunshinelackof 8y ago
A meaningless anecdote here: Sunday while waiting in the grocery store line I looked over at the line next to me and saw a mother feeding a boy a coca-cola. The boy was maybe 3 or 4, small enough that the mom had to hold the bottle for him. I'm not a parent, but I have no idea how you end up in that situation.
vfc1 8y ago
One of the worst things in terms of sugar is Coke and sodas in general, one can of 330ml has 7 teaspoons in it. The only thing that prevents us from throwing it up immediately is the ascorbic acid. This is an epidemic that needs strong legislation. The use of sugar, salt, and fat in food needs to be regulated otherwise it's an arms race for brands that just keep adding all 3 to their products.
- hocuspocus 8y ago
  > This is an epidemic that needs strong legislation. The use of sugar, salt, and fat in food needs to be regulated otherwise it's an arms race for brands that just keep adding all 3 to their products. Lobbying from the food industry is extremely powerful and pervasive. They're using the same playbook as the tobacco industry a few decades ago. For instance the traffic light nutrition labels (that I believe originated from the UK) were shot down at the EU level, under the pretense of not stigmatizing the important gastronomic heritage in several European countries.
jordan801 8y ago
There's a huge problem in the US with what we describe as healthy. Cereal is a huge culprit. All cereals say they're "a healthy part of a balanced breakfast". But almost all of them contain an absolutely ridiculous amount of sugar. Cookie-crisps, golden grams and cinnamon toast crunch are absolutely not a healthy meal. It's disgusting that it can be called such. I hope cereal sounds as blasphemous in the future as the old 50's soda commercials do now. "It's never too early to start your child on a soda regimen. Soda is proven to help your teen fit in". [ EDIT: Apparently this soda commercial was fake ]
- mkirklions 8y ago
  I study food costs calories/dollar vitaminA/dollar protein/dollar, etc.... If your food is being advertised it isnt cheap. You can find lower cost alternatives that are almost always healthier. Fruit and veggies come to mind. 200-300 calories per dollar is cheaper than most snacks, fruits and veggies take moments to be washed and consumed. The way I consider cereal and other carb loaded snacks as: "Empty carbs". And those 700 calories/dollar boxes is nothing like getting 3,000 calories per dollar on rice, oats, breads, or noodles.
- octorian 8y ago
  > All cereals say they're "a healthy part of a balanced breakfast". And are then shown displayed on a table adjacent to that healthy balanced breakfast.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > "It's never too early to start your child on a soda regimen. Soda is proven to help your teen fit in"." FYI, that ad was fake: http://rjwhite.tumblr.com/post/472668874/fact-checking http://rjwhite.tumblr.com/post/472668874/fact-checking
  - jordan801 8y ago
gdilla 8y ago
Lucked out. My son loves fruit since his baby days, so he doesn't like artificially sweet candy (or can self moderate pretty well). Halloween candy just piles up year after year. His school here bans candy in packed lunches too.
tapatio 8y ago
*EVERYBODY is eating more sugar than they should be. It's an epidemic. Shame on Starbucks for raising the price of regular coffee while not raising the prices of their sugary drinks. If they really cared about their customers they would lower the price of regular coffee and raise the price of the sugary crap.
nicwolff 8y ago
The link text on this post incorrectly generalizes from the information on the linked page, which says The study found that toddlers 12 to 18 months consumed 5.5 teaspoons per day, and that toddlers 19 to 23 months consumed 7.1 teaspoons. This is close to, or more than, the amount of sugar recommended by AHA for adult women (six teaspoons) and men (nine teaspoons).
tabtab 8y ago
I suspect mothering instincts are at play, based on observation. If a kid appears to not be eating enough, mothers get really worried. Sugary foods "fix" the problem quickly. Instincts and biological urges are powerful and override rational behavior on many fronts (no pun intended).

325 points by prostoalex 8y ago

The article didn’t really mention the sources. It’s hard to believe the quotes sugar from drinks are being given to toddlers, but perhaps that’s in the form of juice?

philliphaydon 8y ago
Does it matter if it’s fruit juice sugar? Fruit juice sugar is already bad for kids let alone fruit juice with added sugar which is basically most fruit juices you buy. It’s really hard to find 100% fruit juice.
- ledriveby 8y ago
  100% fruit juice is still bad for you; without the pulp to slow down digestion, your liver and pancreas both take a beating from digesting all that fructose at once.
  - philliphaydon 8y ago
    (That’s why I said fruit juice is bad for you) But yes, I concur. http://www.enzafoods.co.nz/the-company/technology/fruit-sugar-chart http://www.enzafoods.co.nz/the-company/technology/fruit-suga... What do you give kids other than water?!?
    - unwind 8y ago
      Here in gloriously over-protective Sweden, the word "juice" can only be used to describe 100% juice, no additives are allowed. I think concentrate can have vitamins added to bring the result back to fresh juice's levels, but that's it. Also, (cow's) milk is popular and IMO much better than juice.
      - extrapickles 8y ago
        In the US, its 100% juice that is protected, where they are only allowed to use juice if they claim that (not sure about fortification though). The main loophole is White Grape Juice, which is very high in sugar and has very little taste. Its pretty common to include it in juices here in the US to bring the sugar content up.
      - sandl 8y ago
        Milk may be better than juice, but it isn't really well suited for humans either. The hormone mixture stimulates cell growth and helps a calf double its weight in 100 days, but what else profits from fast cell growth? Cancer. You will find a lot of studies that support this thesis, and you'll find even more studies denying it - but guess who finances the latter, in most cases it's the dairy industrial complex.
        unwind 8y ago
        In the EU (which Sweden belongs to), giving hormones to dairy animals to increase milk production is illegal, so that was not part of my reasoning. In other countries milk might be less optimal then (but perhaps you get organic milk or something with fewer additives).
        sandl 8y ago
        I wasn't alluding to BST. Milk contains growth hormones naturally, because calves half to gain an absurdly amount of weight in a short time. We don't need to grow so fast as humans.
      - Angostura 8y ago
        Just in case anyone is worried by the suggestion in the sibling comment that dairy products are strongly linked to cancer and the evidence is being suppressed by the industry, here's what Cancer Research UK has to say on the matter: > Milk and dairy are good sources of calcium and protein which are needed as part of a healthy, balanced diet. Calcium is important for teeth and bone health. > Studies looking into the link between cancer and dairy products have not given clear results. There is evidence that dairy products could reduce the risk of bowel cancer, but we cannot say for sure that this is the case. There is no strong evidence linking dairy products to any other types of cancer. We need further research to find out more about the links between dairy products and cancer risk. > Hormones in milk > In some countries, a hormone called bovine somatotrophin (BST) is used to speed up or increase the production of milk or meat. In the UK and the rest of Europe, farmers are banned from using this hormone, and the import of meat from countries, including the US, where this hormone is used is also banned. This ban is on animal welfare grounds and not because there is any proven effect on human health. Independent health bodies including the European Union Scientific Committee have reviewed the evidence on BST and found it does not pose any harm to human health.
    - ido 8y ago
      Unsugared tea! My kid drinks fruit or herbal tea with no additives once or twice a day and otherwise only water.
    - matco11 8y ago
      I suppose, what you do depends on the kids’age. During the day, you don’t really - have to - give them anything else other than water... I squeeze orange juice myself a few times/month. If I buy ready-made juice it’s always without added sugar, and I dilute it with water 1:1 when I pour it in their cups.
    - cjrp 8y ago
      > What do you give kids other than water?!? Lots of kids in England drink squash (maybe called cordial elsewhere?). It's sometimes referred to as juice, but it's much less sugary than actual fruit juice. Is that not a thing elsewhere?
      - wiredfool 8y ago
        Squash/Ribena/'Juice' is heavily sweetened with chemical sweeteners.
        Angostura 8y ago
        Ribena didn't used to be sweetened with artificial sweeteners - it used sugar. Unfortunately, in reaction to the UK government sugar tax, it now is artificially sweetened and tastes foul.
        musage 8y ago
        The claim was "much less sugary than actual fruit juice", and the key word in the response to that was "heavily" -- artificial or not, "foul tasting" or not, is besides the point.
        Symbiote 8y ago
        That's a big change since I lived in England. There used to be half a shelf of "no added sugar" squash, and half a shelf of "no artificial sweeteners". It seems there's now much less choice of sugar-only drinks, although they still exist. Several have redesigned bottles that look more appealing to adults. http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Squash_And_Cordials_in_Tesco.html http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Squash_And_Cordials_i...
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > What do you give kids other than water?!? Well, for my toddler: Milk [0]. Cold herbal tea (generally, diluted chamomile tea.) The occasional yogurt + whole fruit smoothie. (The latter as a treat—either that or a cookie but not both—on grocery shopping trips.) [0] which includes “chocolate milk”, which is approximately a 7:1 ratio of whole milk to ultrafiltered chocolate milk.
    - aikinai 8y ago
      In Japan most kids drink tea, usually barely tea.
    - pofilat 8y ago
      Carbonated water. Why put sugar in water? Water is great.
- labster 8y ago
  Hard to find fruit juice? All I have to do is go to the supermarket, and look through a few bottles until I find one that says 100% fruit juice. (Alternate plan: go to back yard, collect oranges, juice them). Compare that harrowing experience to a hunter-gatherer, sheesh.
  - philliphaydon 8y ago
    Yeah. Look at them. Because the vast majority have added sugar. That’s my point is it’s more common for fruit juices to have added sugar than to be 100%. Which doesn’t help parents who think they are doing good by buying juice rather than coke for their kid.
    - emmanuel_1234 8y ago
      Even though it doesn't matter. Freshly squeezed juice from your garden have about 114g of carbs / liter (of which 90g of sugar). Coke has 110g of carbs / liter (all sugar). Yes, coke has more sugar, but it's the same order of magnitude, fruit juice, even freshly squeezed from pure organic oranges is very much comparable to soda.
      - raarts 8y ago
        Fruits are the sweets of nature. Don't eat too much of them.
        mkl 8y ago
        Fruit is okay, but fruit juice is another story. Without the fibre it's digested quite differently and is not very good for you.
    - Sargos 8y ago
      Where do you live? I'm from the US and here it's very easy to find 100% juice as that's the most advertised kind and is on the "prime shelf" at the store. It's usually printed in a central spot on the label near the logo. The added sugar juices became very unpopular years ago when sugar got its current bad reputation.
- yumyai 8y ago
  "fruit juice" Wait, is there a "non-fruit" juice?

WalterSear 8y ago

Good thing they aren't adults, then.

emmanuel_1234 8y ago

It's absolutely mind blowing that this article doesn't mention diabetes as the main problem from eating too much sugar. It affects a third of Americans and is spreading around the world at an alarming rate. Why is that? Why is it that my mother knew about sugar and diabetes, but it's almost as if we forgot and are painfully trying to prove the connection again.

notyme 8y ago
Just look at the advertising and lobbying spending of sugar industry to gauge their power over population's discretionary spending.Also, bulk of their marketing spend is during cartoon programming of kids, "catch'em young"! They successfully shifted blame from sugar to fat as cause of modern lifestyle diseases for last two decades. Would highly recommend the book "Case against Sugar" by Gary Taubes discussed amply here[0] and here[1]. Also recommend the documentary "Super Size Me"[2] a revealing take on workings of fast food industry. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12480733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12480733 [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521882 [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgcc_ZZnAgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgcc_ZZnAgM
- HedgeSparrow 8y ago
  I agree with you for the first two points, but Supersize Me is a sham of science.
philip1209 8y ago
America is in denial that their low-fat diet fails, and instead creates obesity, type two diabetes, and heart disease.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Low-carb has replaced low-fat as the diet trend for the last couple decades; and most people that aren't on the popular trendy diet aren't eating low-fat, they are eating high-everytjin, especially both carbs and fat (they may consume some low fat products intermittently for the illusion of doing something, but the typical American diet isn't low in fat.)

willtim 8y ago

The food industry needs a lot more regulation IMHO. It often misleads the consumer with its marketing, but a cereal or juice drink is not healthy when it's rammed full of sugar.

arthurcolle 8y ago
On a related note, I'm repeatedly surprised by how much the packaging design in foods/edible products seems to be explicitly designed to convey a sense of "health-conscious" awareness/ things like cute leaf designs and appealing white/off-white packaging when really if you look at the ingredients, itll be full of refined sugars - seems like the related industries might need some kind of regulations as well But I guess this would just roll up into "food industry regulation" anyways
spodek 8y ago
> food industry When you refine the addictive, pleasure-causing white powder out of a plant and make cocaine or heroine we call it a drug. For historical reasons when we do it to make sugar we call it food, but it seems more of a drug. Maybe drug regulations should apply.
- wilsonnb2 8y ago
  > For historical reasons Seems more likely that it's because people eat sugar, and they don't eat heroin or cocaine.
  - pofilat 8y ago
    People chew and brew coca like coffee and tea
- stephen_g 8y ago
  I think we all agree that most people eat way too much refined sugar, and technically don't really need to eat any, but come on, that's just ridiculous hyperbole... Since most plant foods we eat, hell, even breast milk contains the exact same sugars that are refined into table sugar, syrups, etc. and the chemicals themselves are required by the body for things like brain function, it's probably fair enough to call it a food...

kwhitefoot 8y ago

In my household sugary drinks were only allowed occasionally, otherwise the children just drank water. Now that they are grown up they continue to drink mostly water. It helps that we live in a small town in Norway that has very good water. If we had to drink water from some of the places I have visited in the US the story might have been different as the water tasted so bad. I suppose we would have bought bottled water.

apexalpha 8y ago
Same here, milk for breakfast and lunch and water otherwise. We got a litle bowl of crisps and a glass of cola each saturday.
sundvor 8y ago
Agreed Norwegian water was great. I recall when I grew up in Fredrikstad, Coca Cola was always the go-to drink #1 at parties etc. They did a stellar job inserting themselves. Fortunately those were the only occasions when we'd have it, and as kids we were far more active back then - roaming the streets and forests, so we had more than enough activity to offset. My son's grown up on water after the breast and has very little interest in soft drinks now, not that we encourage him to try them out.

toomanybeersies 8y ago

Last year I went a month avoiding any food or drink that contained added sugar. Health benefits aside (I was also exercising a lot more and drinking less, so I can't comment on specific benefits), it was incredibly hard. It wasn't the sugar cravings that were hard. I didn't get them at all, I didn't miss sweet food or sugar one bit. The hard part was actually finding food that didn't contain added sugar. I was basically relegated to preparing all my food from scratch. Practically anything in a packet contained sugar. Even the most innocuous things would contain it. Obviously some things only contain low amounts and that's normal (e.g. cured meats), but I couldn't eat most bread, any sauces, the vast majority of pre-prepared meals (except for "paleo" meals), or any spice mixes. Even bottled mayonnaise contains sugar! It made trying to find a snack incredibly difficult, I basically had to eat carrots and hummus. At least whisky contains no added sugar (caramel colouring wasn't counted as sugar, in this case).

maxerickson 8y ago
Funny that you split the hair on the caramel colouring in the fermented, distilled sugar.
- opencl 8y ago
  The fermenting process gets rid of almost all of the sugar.
  - detaro 8y ago
    By turning it into alcohol, at only about 20 % loss of caloric content (if my math is correct).
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    Yeah, I used the past tense up there. It also wouldn't be added sugar if it was there from the start, it would be remaining sugar. But ethanol probably isn't a whole lot better as excess calories than sugars are.
martinwww 8y ago

sundvor 8y ago

Wow... ${expletives}. It is all starting to make sense to me now. Ref what I wrote on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17017920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17017920 : "As a Norwegian, when I visited Boston in 1999 for an Allaire dev conference I saw more grossly fat / obese people in the _hour_ spent switching flights at Newark airport than I had in my (then) home country in the preceding year. I was really taken aback." I never got my now 7y son into juices etc and Coke products are generally banned in our home. He has a very healthy body weight, so that's one fewer thing he has to worry about whilst growing up.

adventured 8y ago
So was the entire point of your post an excuse to do the typical obnoxious Scandinavian thing and brag about how Scandinavians are superior? What else are you saying in the content of that post? Why should I ref that linked post, you quoted all of it, except for this cheap bash: "There's clearly a lot of things the US is not doing right on many, many levels." I'd love an explanation for how all of that adds up to anything other than: US dumb, Scandinavians superior peoples. I mean that's really great, just put it over there in the giant pile of worthless US bashing. You're in Australia and conveniently avoided talking about their similarly extreme 29% obesity rate (the US is at 36%).
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
I was in Copenhagen earlier this year and I commented to my wife and our friends multiple times on how there were just no obese people anywhere. You Scandinavians are obviously doing something right.
- toxik 8y ago
  Some do, especially in bigger cities. Rural and suburban Sweden for example is getting obese at an alarming rate. But don't worry, the tax payers can foot that bill too I guess.
- jernfrost 8y ago
  A lot of that comes down to much stronger belief in government regulation and initiative. In the US it seems there is an outrage every time somebody suggests some kind of regulation to promote health and welfare. I suspect that outrage is partly manufactured by the sugar and junk food industry though. Copenhagen is also very active in getting people to bike in town instead of driving.

sharcerer 8y ago

I see this happening a lot. For eg, on youtube I often see Casey neistat buying candies,marshmallow candy for his daughter. Now i am not targeting him.just pointing out what i notice.(he has made great videos on actual calory content in butgers etc).He also has some juice many a times after runs, i dunno whether that's healthy juice without sugar. But, basically parents give in to kid's demands. Also, lack of suitable choices. I am in India, and even see poor mothers,kids purchasing chips or eating some refined flour item on roadside coz it's easily available. Also, a while ago i read that in Brazil ,Nestle has these agents who sell nestle food poducts door2door, also obesity has risen due to high consumption of cheap ,packaged products like Nestle's. Big Food,Big Oil are the most prime corporate evils whose actions will be felt for many decades to come. I guess there are food startups trying to make good products, but haven't heard of a lot. I dunno whether their low sugar initiatives aee actually good, i mean it's obvious that after a cetain time they will have to change or perish but the question is how long.

themodelplumber 8y ago
Part of the problem is that in moderation, it's fine. I experienced this personally during a time of extreme weight loss; about 1/4 to 1/3 of my diet was chocolate in the form of boxes of candy bars I bought on clearance. The rest was greens, massive amounts of spinach, and nuts. I went to the hospital later that year with a kidney stone, and was told: Stop eating the spinach and cut back on nuts, these foods are way too high in oxalates! Other than that I was healthy as a horse, with a resting pulse of 40 bpm and having lost 100 lbs. I'm an anecdote, but many people look and feel OK and eat tons of refined sugar. That's part of the reason it's still around. We like it and show no ill effects.
- mnw21cam 8y ago
  Different people are different. I seem to be able to eat any level of sugar I want without putting on a pound, but the missus is having to go on a low-carb diet.
gerardnll 8y ago
Food is not only calories. Quality of ingredients matter. Plenty of studies relate refined oils, flours, sugars to cancer, diabetes, heart problems. Cheap, easy to get != healthy. It's cheap and unhealthy because ingredients are low quality. Was processed food in supermarkets a hundred years ago? Humans don't need it. Of course food is safer than 100 years ago, but also processed food has pulled apart healthy and unprocessed food from our diets. Nestle, Coca-Cola, Unilever, they are in universities, associations, etc... we see plenty of cases here in Spain. They do courses for professionals... and they are the brands with the best public perception. And we say advertising doesn't work?

gerardnll 8y ago

'We’ve long known that processed sugar is bad for kids.' Why 'for kids'? It's bad for everyone. People don't realize sugar is the most socially accepted and legal drug ever and with more addicts I would say. There's plenty of studies that talk about how bad are added sugars. Governments don't do enough to contain this drug. WHO recommends free sugars to be less than 10% of daily calorie intake. And suggests going down to 5%. Source: http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/guidelines/sugar_intake_information_note_en.pdf http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/guidelines/sugar_i... An adult that takes 2000 calories, should not take more than 25g of free sugars. Now tell me if it's easy for you to not go over the limit. Kids and todlers food has more sugar than adult processed food, maybe so they create a dependency on sugary products since they are babies? And so they buy these products when they are older. We've all seen kids asking cookies and shitty food instead of vegetables (or unprocessed food), they get angry and parents have to say 'no, you've to have lunch now'. Isn't that strange? We are so used to this. Food is not only calories. Quality of ingredients matter. Plenty of studies relate refined oils, flours, sugars to cancer, diabetes, heart problems. Cheap, easy to get != healthy. It's cheap and unhealthy because ingredients are low quality. Was processed food in supermarkets a hundred years ago? Humans don't need it. Of course food is safer than 100 years ago, but also processed food has pulled apart healthy and unprocessed food from our diets. Nestle, Coca-Cola, Unilever, they are in universities, associations, etc... we see plenty of cases here in Spain. They do courses for professionals... and they are the brands with the best public perception. And we say advertising doesn't work? So many inputs when you go to a supermarket and so easy to fall for a chocolate bar, for some cereals, sweetened yogurts, refined flours white breads... Then, they try to sell you some (supposedly healthy) food because it has some part of bio unrefined flours, but it's the same disguised as healthy. To avoid all these games they play you just have to look for vegetables, fish, (some) meat, dairy products, eggs, fruits, dried fruits... just unprocessed food or foods like canned peas and other minimal treated foods were a physical process like boiling has been applied.

croon 8y ago
This has become increasingly vivid for me since having a child. I've only been "health conscious" for half a decade or so, and went sugarless for at least a year of that, but got off that mainly for social reasons and difficulties finding food when not at home. But to the point: We have thus far made all her food from scratch, and would never in a million years entertain the idea of feeding her soda, cookies, or ice cream, when she's already super happy with cinnamon oatmeal with mashed apple or brown rice carrot chicken with cumin and black pepper. Because why not? That stuff is super tasty. What's weird and really scary is realizing the effect sugar has on your own psyche. I know sugar only do bad things to my body in the long term, and yet I stuff my face with a chocolate bar for the immediate euphoria. Stepping back and reviewing the ingrained cultural tradition of sugar becomes fascinating when we consider it only does harm, and it's extremely addictive. If we (hyperbole, I know, or is it?) substitute heroin for it, and then discuss it like we do sugar? "It's his/her birthday, we should celebrate it with a cake (heroin). Just this once" "Heroin is fine in moderation, if you otherwise live healthy and eat well". "I only use heroin sometimes, and I'm in control of it." I mean, I guess all of those can be true, but it's keeping something really bad in your life that probably takes a heavy mental toll, rather than just avoiding it. And I'm as guilty as anyone. And I'm sure my daughter will be exposed in time regardless of what we as parents do. Maybe it's not as dire as I portray it, but does it have any redeeming qualities, at all?

partycoder 8y ago

The problem with sugar is that there's no daily recommended value... because that value would be 0. A "safe value" for an adult would probably be up to 40g. A can of soda has exactly that amount. Now imagine a kid eating cereal, snacks, then soda... can probably end up having 160g of sugar in a day, or about 38 teaspoons.

chriselles 8y ago

I went strict ketogenic diet(high fat, protein, very low carb, zero sugar) 16 weeks ago. I’ve dropped 20kg in that time and just last week ran a marathon carrying a 25kg pack in 5 hours 48 minutes with just an 11 week train up. Zero sugar diet has been a massive positive game changer for me. You can still have desserts that don’t require sugar! The only difficulty with it has been the struggle of what/where to eat when traveling. It now really clicks for me after several years of putting the pieces of the puzzle together. 3 years ago I met a cohort of middle aged male vets from a specific military unit with a work culture where sugar was viewed as poison for the 40 years since this community’s inception. They all seemed noticeably younger than their actual years. I’d like to learn if telomere length is shortened by sugar consumption and conversely lengthened by the absence of sugar in your diet.

bsaul 8y ago

Recently spent a month in SF after having spent a month in japan : US needs to restart its food habits from scratch. yes, you can eat very healthily if you’re ready to spend 40$ per meal ( either in restaurants or buying in organic groceries), but anything under that price will get you fat, sweeten,artifically flavored, huge piles of sh*t. And this was SF. I can’t even imagine how it’s like in the average US city.

halflings 8y ago
> if you’re ready to spend 40$ per meal ( either in restaurants or buying in organic groceries), but anything under that price will get you fat, sweeten,artifically flavored, huge piles of sh*t. This is really exaggerated. I lived in SF, and would easily prepare healthy meals for ~$6-8 per meal ($2-3 for some proteins, $1 or less for some portion of rice or some bread, and the rest for vegetables). Maybe $10 max if I felt like eating avocado :) For one thing, healthy != organic. As much as pesticides are harmful on the long run, the biggest health hazard is the type of food you consume, not its provenance. Eating bananas or some oatmeal instead of pop tarts and Oreos saves you money.
- samsonradu 8y ago
  You used the word prepare. Plenty of people do not have that option, either because they're in a hurry or they don't live nearby or, like in my case, they're tourists. Though I agree that SF is better than other places, having more health-ish food shops, overall US-wise it's not easy to avoid sugars.
  - frockington 8y ago
    It's really easy to avoid sugars and when not in SF its even cheaper. In Ohio a healthy meal for 2 would be ~$5. $0.50 for rice, $0.50 for beans, 2 peppers for $1.50, pound of chicken for $1.50.
  - halflings 8y ago
    GP spent a month in SF so I assumed they weren't a tourist. They also mentioned organic groceries so they included cooked meals in this. Even if you eat out, you won't have to pay $40 for a healthy meal. You can get something good for $15-20, which is still pretty expensive... but not $40, and not significantly more expensive than comparable unhealthy foods; of course McDonalds is cheaper, but then again unless we're talking about people that have no money to spare, it's more likely they're choosing unhealthy food rather than being forced to buy it.

golemotron 8y ago

The scariest part of this article is that there is still an amount of sugar that is recommended for adults.

frockington 8y ago
What makes a recommended dose of sugar scarier than childhood obesity? I'd rather there was some guideline than none at all

ainiriand 8y ago

As it should be, sugar is a reward for the body and only very occasionally should be eaten. 0 sugar should be the norm. Maybe you can have some cookies or homemade pastry on a special day but that's it, the rest is harming you.

ponderatul 8y ago

Who needs conspiracies when you have pure greed and unmanaged corporate interests.

jernfrost 8y ago

You need to tackle this stuff early on. Here in Norway sweets are banned from pre-school and school in lunch boxes, including for birth days. There are no pre-school or school celebrations involving sweets. The kids get involved early in learning about healthy food making and we get a cook book about what sort of food one should make for children when they start school. This is something so serious for people's future and life that I don't think one can focus enough on it.

sudhirj 8y ago
Can you link to the rules / cookbook if available?
- jernfrost 8y ago
  I'll check with my wife later what the title was and if they got it online.
  - sgc 8y ago
    Thanks, I am curious as well.
- jernfrost 8y ago
  Here is a link to the current version: http://www.kagge.no/index.cfm?tmpl=butikk&a=product_inline&b_kid=98232&b_id=1195599 http://www.kagge.no/index.cfm?tmpl=butikk&a=product_inline&b... The description is in Norwegian but I can give a quick summary: It gives recipes for breakfast, lunch boxes, food for hiking trips (hiking is very common in Norway), dinner, supper and snacks. The recipes are simple and tasty. There are discussion of what is healthy and what one should eat. It has different authors. One of the co-authors is Rune Blomhoff who is nutritional science professor at university of Oslo and one of the leading researchers in the world on anti-oxydants. In our book there are discussion for each dish what part of the food making the kids can participate in. It is to encourage children to learn about food themselves and get used to making healthy food themselves.
  - 8y ago

zby 8y ago

What is really the difference between what we call sugar and regular carbohydrates that constitute a huge part of our diet? They all enter the blood stream as monosaccharides. There is difference in how fast this happens - but is that so important?

TurboHaskal 8y ago
We should now put babies on ketogenic diets just because the majority of the adult population is sedentary, apparently.
scroot 8y ago
Robert Lustig argues that the rate is precisely what's important: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
paulsutter 8y ago
Table sugar is half fructose half dextrose. Fructose is metabolized through the liver similar to alcohol, whereas dextrose is glucose and metabolized like a simple carb. Fructose has been increasing as a percent of daily calories since the 70s as a consequence of attempts to reduce fat, and this is the likely cause behind the massive increase in diabetes.
- refurb 8y ago
  Table sugar is half fructose and half glucose.
  - mrob 8y ago
    Dextrose is an alternative name for D-glucose (the naturally occurring isomer of glucose). The parent comment even said "dextrose is glucose".

TurboHaskal 8y ago

I fail to see the issue here. Toddlers need plenty of energy and calorie dense food, unlike the average sedentary American.

Freak_NL 8y ago
Childhood obesity is a growing concern. The idea is that growing up with a healthy eating pattern can prevent obesity and other health problems, because changing ingrained habits is very hard. Eating healthy (i.e., eating normally) can be a valuable part of their education.

spodek 8y ago

> The study found that toddlers 12 to 18 months consumed 5.5 teaspoons per day, and that toddlers 19 to 23 months consumed 7.1 teaspoons. Toddlers consumed? More like parents fed them. Toddlers eat what's put in front of them. > parents might want to consider cutting soft drinks, fruit drinks, . . . "might want to consider*?!?! Might they want to consider not giving the kids cocaine too?

ebikelaw 8y ago
The parents at my kids’ school talk about “trying” to get their kids to eat right. I just dont get it. You want them to eat something? You give it to them! If you don't want them to eat something then don't put it on the table. This could not be simpler. My kids beg for chard and broccoli.
- protonimitate 8y ago
  I think in America there is a huge misconception on what 'hungry' actually is/feels like. People think that if you don't stuff your kid 3 times a day with massive quantities of food, they will fade away over night. It's very easy to refuse food and be picky when you are not truly hungry. My personal rule of thumb is if my least favorite food doesn't sound edible, I don't actually need to eat.
  - neutronicus 8y ago
    I've got a nephew-to-be in Israel who's a really picky eater, and his parents resort to bribing him sugar to get him to eat healthier stuff. But, like, the kid is demonstrably underweight for his age, shorter than all his classmates, etc. So I don't know if just starving him is the right call either. Some people (you) get lucky and don't have to make the decision, but sometimes it actually is hard to get kids to eat.
deleted 8y ago
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Timpy 8y ago

Taking responsibility for your health is discouraging in America. You have to go through great lengths to avoid added sugars, companies hide or obscure the amount of sugar they're putting in their product. I'm tired of feeling like I have to defend myself from the people trying to sell me things, it's difficult trying to make decisions that are best for me when multi-billion dollar companies are doing everything they can to manipulate me into consuming their products.

jernfrost 8y ago
I hear you. When we took our baby to the US on vacation I found it really hard to find appropriate food. American baby food had added salt and sugar which is illegal to add to baby food in Norway. We have the opposite "problem". There is no way to find baby food jars with salt or added sugar. That can't be sold in the store. I don't get why America is so against regulation like this to promote the welfare of the most previous thing in people's lives. Do corporate interests really have that much power?
- Timpy 8y ago
  >Do corporate interests really have that much power? In short, yes.
  - jernfrost 8y ago
    Why isn't there more political engagement to change that? Like pass laws to limit corporate influence?
- psyc 8y ago
  Corporate interests have nearly all of the power, as far as I can tell. They also constitute a huge part of the culture, and occupy a psychological position that I would call almost sacred.
beezle 8y ago
I grew up in the 70s and 80s. Notice a few comments elsewhere about how skinny people on TV in that period looked. Yet, many, if not most, of the products available then are still on the market today. Even the really bad ones like.. Coke or Captain Crunch or.. ice cream! If kids, and people in general, are suffering from too much sugar the blame falls squarely on their own shoulders. If you are so lazy that the only food bought is heavily processed, then yes, your daily intake of sugar, fats and calories will be quite high. Not giving your kids juice boxes thrice times daily will go a long way too, but you may need to listen to them whine about having to drink.. water.

gameswithgo 8y ago

It is being discovered that obesity in kids also lowers their IQs. Obesity is one of the reasons US healthcare is so expensive as well. There are some things we can do to put a dent in this that should appeal to both left and right leaning Americans - like ending subsides on foods used to make sugar (corn). If there are any influential people in the thread, I can't imagine why we can't make this happen, this is a crisis.

maxxxxx 8y ago

Just look at the size of candy bars. When I was a kid the candy bars were at Max half the size of what i see now in stores. Same for ice cream scoops. They are a full meal today.

cimmanom 8y ago

Try, for a week, tracking the total amount of sugar you consume each day. If you live in the US, it's likely to be shockingly higher than you might have guessed. For instance, a single "protein bar" can provide 3/4 of your recommended daily sugar intake (for a man) or 100% (for a woman). Getting in the habit of checking utrition labels also reveals some surprises and frustrations. In the average American grocery store, try to find a single cold breakfast cereal with less than 5g of sugar per serving.

jacobolus 8y ago
There are plenty of breakfast cereals like that: Cheerios, Chex, Rice Krispies, Corn flakes, Wheaties, Grape nuts, Life, Shredded wheat, .... They are still pure processed carbs, not really the best regular breakfast.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  I thought that too. And then I actually checked the nutrition labels for Cheerios and Rice Krispies, etc. Of the ones you listed, only Shredded Wheat has less than 5g sugar per serving.
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    Cheerios is 1g sugar per cup of cereal according to the label on the box in my pantry, etc.
    - cimmanom 8y ago
      Are you in the US? Last I looked in the grocery store (about 3 months ago), it was 9g.
      - jacobolus 8y ago
        http://www.generalmills.com/~/media/Images/Brands/Nutritional_Images/Big_G/Cheerios.JPG http://www.generalmills.com/~/media/Images/Brands/Nutritiona... You were probably looking at one of the sugar-added variants like Honey Nut Cheerios, Very Berry Cheerios, Chocolate Cheerios, Frosted Cheerios, ...

JoshMnem 8y ago

It probably helps to set a good example for kids. I eliminated nearly all sugar about three years ago and highly recommend it. Food is fuel, not a recreational drug. Added sugar is purely recreational.

elvirs 8y ago

there is sugar in absolutely everything in America. Bread, cereal, oatmeal, any drink, even canned tomatoes have sugar in them. I don't know whats american food manufacturers' obsession with putting sugar into everything. The govt should mandate a huge warning label on foods that contains more than 1% sugar in it just like they did with cigarettes. May be then manufacturers will be discouraged from supplementing nutritious ingredients with the poison called sugar.

sunshinelackof 8y ago

A meaningless anecdote here: Sunday while waiting in the grocery store line I looked over at the line next to me and saw a mother feeding a boy a coca-cola. The boy was maybe 3 or 4, small enough that the mom had to hold the bottle for him. I'm not a parent, but I have no idea how you end up in that situation.

vfc1 8y ago

One of the worst things in terms of sugar is Coke and sodas in general, one can of 330ml has 7 teaspoons in it. The only thing that prevents us from throwing it up immediately is the ascorbic acid. This is an epidemic that needs strong legislation. The use of sugar, salt, and fat in food needs to be regulated otherwise it's an arms race for brands that just keep adding all 3 to their products.

hocuspocus 8y ago
> This is an epidemic that needs strong legislation. The use of sugar, salt, and fat in food needs to be regulated otherwise it's an arms race for brands that just keep adding all 3 to their products. Lobbying from the food industry is extremely powerful and pervasive. They're using the same playbook as the tobacco industry a few decades ago. For instance the traffic light nutrition labels (that I believe originated from the UK) were shot down at the EU level, under the pretense of not stigmatizing the important gastronomic heritage in several European countries.

jordan801 8y ago

There's a huge problem in the US with what we describe as healthy. Cereal is a huge culprit. All cereals say they're "a healthy part of a balanced breakfast". But almost all of them contain an absolutely ridiculous amount of sugar. Cookie-crisps, golden grams and cinnamon toast crunch are absolutely not a healthy meal. It's disgusting that it can be called such. I hope cereal sounds as blasphemous in the future as the old 50's soda commercials do now. "It's never too early to start your child on a soda regimen. Soda is proven to help your teen fit in". [ EDIT: Apparently this soda commercial was fake ]

mkirklions 8y ago
I study food costs calories/dollar vitaminA/dollar protein/dollar, etc.... If your food is being advertised it isnt cheap. You can find lower cost alternatives that are almost always healthier. Fruit and veggies come to mind. 200-300 calories per dollar is cheaper than most snacks, fruits and veggies take moments to be washed and consumed. The way I consider cereal and other carb loaded snacks as: "Empty carbs". And those 700 calories/dollar boxes is nothing like getting 3,000 calories per dollar on rice, oats, breads, or noodles.
octorian 8y ago
> All cereals say they're "a healthy part of a balanced breakfast". And are then shown displayed on a table adjacent to that healthy balanced breakfast.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
chimeracoder 8y ago
> "It's never too early to start your child on a soda regimen. Soda is proven to help your teen fit in"." FYI, that ad was fake: http://rjwhite.tumblr.com/post/472668874/fact-checking http://rjwhite.tumblr.com/post/472668874/fact-checking
- jordan801 8y ago

gdilla 8y ago

Lucked out. My son loves fruit since his baby days, so he doesn't like artificially sweet candy (or can self moderate pretty well). Halloween candy just piles up year after year. His school here bans candy in packed lunches too.

tapatio 8y ago

*EVERYBODY is eating more sugar than they should be. It's an epidemic. Shame on Starbucks for raising the price of regular coffee while not raising the prices of their sugary drinks. If they really cared about their customers they would lower the price of regular coffee and raise the price of the sugary crap.

nicwolff 8y ago

The link text on this post incorrectly generalizes from the information on the linked page, which says The study found that toddlers 12 to 18 months consumed 5.5 teaspoons per day, and that toddlers 19 to 23 months consumed 7.1 teaspoons. This is close to, or more than, the amount of sugar recommended by AHA for adult women (six teaspoons) and men (nine teaspoons).

tabtab 8y ago

I suspect mothering instincts are at play, based on observation. If a kid appears to not be eating enough, mothers get really worried. Sugary foods "fix" the problem quickly. Instincts and biological urges are powerful and override rational behavior on many fronts (no pun intended).